Last week’s Mobile World Congress
in Barcelona saw over 93,000 visitors, from 200 countries. So much went on that
it would be impossible to cover everything in one blog post, but we’ve trawled
through all the product launches, all the speeches, and all the awards, to
bring you the best of the best of MWC15.
Wearables
With rumours of Apple’s
now-launched ‘iWatch’ doing the rounds in the run up to MWC, both Huawei, and
LG debuted their upcoming wearable devices.
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| www.smarterwaching.com |
Huawei offered their latest
Android Wear watch, with circular display, text, email, and phone call
notifications, and a number of fitness features. They also demoed the TalkBand
B2 and TalkBand N1, which they say are designed for the business-person on the
run. The TalkBand B2 received somewhat mixed reviews for its ability to be
transformed into a Bluetooth earpiece.
LG launched two watches, the LG
Watch Urbane, and the Watch Urbane LTE. The Urbane is stylish, and has a look
which many find competitive with designer watches – for those who have, thus
far, found the wearable device market to be somewhat lacking in beauty. It also
claims a longer battery life than any Android Wear device to date.
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| arstechnica.com |
The LTE, due to its mobile
payment capability, uses webOS rather than Android Wear. It was perhaps a
little early for both devices to be presented, but LG knew this, and gambled
that getting something out there would be better than nothing, in order to have
a chance of competing with Apple.
Apps
IBM announced that they have come
up with another three iOS apps to add to the ten released last year, as part of
their partnership with Apple.
RefMe – an app that has intrigued
the Fivebars team for some time now – won
best British mobile startup for its free student referencing app. Look out for
more on this in an upcoming blog post about some of the best apps for students
and academics.
There’s also a new messaging app
– YO! – already available on Android devices.
It may seem to many to be an already saturated market, but YO!’s offline
capabilities make it a potentially major player in the likes of Bangladesh
(where it was beta-tested), where limited data plans and slow connections mean
that file-sharing isn’t as quick and easy as it is in the west.
Phones
MWC15 saw the 20th
Annual Global Mobile Awards, at which over 35 awards were given out in
different categories. The phones that stood out were the Apple iPhone 6, and
the LG G3 – joint winners of “Best Smartphone” as well as the Motorola Moto E,
winner of “Best Low-Cost Smartphone.” Unsurprisingly it was the Samsung
Galaxy 6 Edge which won “Best New Handset, Tablet, or Device.”
Honourable mention
As a company who specialise in
finding the best mobile phone deal for our business customers, we are always on
the lookout for anything that might streamline our work day. As such, IKEA wins
our award! Beginning next month, the Swedish furniture company will be selling
lamps and tables with Qi wireless
charging pads – meaning no more wires everywhere to trip over.
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